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Metaphysics of mind :: Physicalism :: Physicalism, misc

• Robert Bishop (2006). The hidden premise in the causal argument for physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The causal argument for physicalism is anayzed and it's key premise--the causal closure of physics--is found wanting. Therefore, a hidden premise must be added to the argument to gain its conclusion, but the hidden premise is indistinguishable from the conclusion of the causal argument. Therefore, it begs the question on physicalism
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2006.00588.x
  
• Andrew Chrucky (1990). Critique of Wilfrid Sellars' Materialism.   (More)
• Gary Gates (2001). Physicalism, empiricism, and positivism.   (More)
• Pierre Jacob (2002). Some problems for reductive physicalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://pierrejacob.hautetfort.com/files/kim.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/41/HTML/
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/disk0/00/00/00/47/ijn_00000047_00/ijn_00000047_00.htm
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00228.x
  
• Joseph Levine (online). Comments on Melnyk's A Physicalist Manifesto.   (More)
• Barry Loewer (2001). From physics to physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The appeal of materialism lies precisely in this, in its claim to be natural metaphysics within the bounds of science. That a doctrine which promises to gratify our ambition (to know the noumenal) and our caution (not to be unscientific) should have great appeal is hardly something to be wondered at. (Putnam (1983), p.210) Materialism says that all facts, in particular all mental facts, obtain in virtue of the spatio- temporal distribution, and properties, of matter. It was, as Putnam says, “metaphysics within the bounds of science”, but only so long as science was thought to say that the world is made out of matter.1 In this century physicists have learned that there is more in the world than matter and, in any case, matter isn’t quite what it seemed to be. For this reason many philosophers who think that metaphysics should be informed by science advocate physicalism in place of materialism. Physicalism claims that all facts obtain in virtue of the distribution of the fundamental entities and properties –whatever they turn out to be- of completed fundamental physics. Later I will discuss a more precise formulation. But not all contemporary philosophers embrace physicalism. Some- and though a minority not a small or un-influential one- think that physicalism is rather the metaphysics for an unjustified scientism; i.e. it is scientistic metaphysics. Those among them that think that physicalism can be clearly formulated think that it characterizes a
• Barbara Montero & David Papineau (2005). A defense of the via negativa argument for physicalism.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anal/2005/00000065/00000003/art00011
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2005.00556.x
  
• Tom Polger (online). A posteriori physicalism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: A consideration of the benefits of taking physicalism to be necessarily true if true, against the standard view that physicalism is at best contingently true. Presented at the 2006 Central Division meeting of the APA, in the session Themes from Jaegwon Kim, sponsored by the Society for Asian and Asian-American Philosophy
• Howard Robinson (1998). Materialism in the philosophy of mind.   (More)
• David Spurrett (ms). The completeness of physics.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition to those who argue that formulation is impossible because no account of what is to count as physical can be provided, I argue that as long as the purpose of the argument in which the account is to be used are borne in mind there are no significant difficulties. The account of the physical which I develop holds as physical whatever is needed to fix the likelihood of pre-theoretically given physical effects, and hypothesises in addition that no chemical, biological or psychological factors will be needed in this way. The thus formulated Completeness Thesis is coherent, and has significant empirical content. In opposition to those who defend the doctrine of emergentism by means of philosophical arguments I contend that those arguments are flawed, setting up misleading dichotomies between needlessly attenuated alternatives and assuming the truth of what is to be proved. Against those who defend emergentism by appeal to the evidence, I argue that the history of science since the nineteenth century shows clearly that the empirical credentials of the view that the world is causally closed at the level of a small number of purely physical forces and types of energy is stronger than ever, and the credentials of emergentism correspondingly weaker. In opposition to those who argue that difficulties with reductionism point to the implausibility of the Completeness Thesis I argue that completeness in no way entails the kinds of reductionism which give rise to the difficulties in question. I argue further that the truth of the Completeness Thesis is in fact compatible with a great deal of taxonomic disorder and the impossibility of any general reduction of non-fundamental descriptions to fundamental ones. In opposition to those who argue that the epistemological credentials of fundamental physical laws are poor, and that those laws should in fact be seen as false, I contend that truth preserving accounts of fundamental laws can be developed. Developing such an account, I test it by considering cases of the composition of forces and causes, where what takes place is different to what is predicted by reference to any single law, and argue that viewing laws as tendencies allows their truth to be preserved, and sense to be made of both the experimental discovery of laws, and the fact that composition enables accurate prediction in at least some cases
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://cogprints.org/3379/1/DSTHESIS.pdf
  http://cogprints.org/3379/01/DSTHESIS.pdf
  http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003379/01/DSTHESIS.pdf
  
• Daniel Stoljar (online). Physicalism.   (More)

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